Psychosocial environments of black colleges: A theory-based assessment

Abstract

Holland's theory of person environment interactions has considerable potential for helping to integrate environmental psychology with personality social psychology. This study applied measures based on his theory to the environments of black colleges. Compared to the U.S. labor force as a whole, blacks are over represented in social service careers and under represented in technical and managerial careers, and it is possible that the environments provided by black colleges may help cause or perpetuate this distribution of blacks among careers. Accordingly, the faculties of predominantly black colleges and of a representative sample of U.S. postsecondary institutions were classified in terms of Holland's six types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. Compared to U.S. colleges as a whole, the faculties of black colleges are relatively more concentrated in Social fields and relatively less concentrated in Realistic and Enterprising fields. Thus the environments of black colleges and universities resemble the distribution of blacks among careers. These results imply that efforts to improve black colleges might emphasize recruitment of faculty members in Realistic and Enterprising fields. Implifications for environmental psychologists working in other contexts are considered.

Recently, a number of writers have pointed to a growing rapprochement between environmental psychology and the field of personality social psychology (Canter & Craik, 1981; Little 1983). This trend suggests that Holland's (1966a, 1985) theory of person environment interactions may have considerable utility for environmental psychology. This theory has received little attention from environmental psychologists, perhaps because it grows out of counseling and educational psychology and therefore is outside the experience of many environmental psychologists (Richards, 1974a). It offers major advantages, however, in that it explicitly views personality and environments in terms of a common conceptual framework, and that it predicts the consequences of personality environment interactions.

One of the major applications of this theory has involved the assessment of the environments provided by institutions of higher education. More specifically, the theory has been applied successfully to two-year and four-year colleges and universities in the United States (Astin, 1963; Astin & Holland, 1961; Richards, Bulkeley, & Richards, 1972; Richards, Seligman, & Jones, 1970), to Japanese universities (Richards, 1973, 1975), and to universities in the British Commonwealth (Richards, 1974b, 1975). The present study used measures derived from the theory to compare the environments of black colleges and universities with the environments of U.S. colleges and universities in general.

This comparison was deemed important because of the possibility that black colleges may be playing a role in causing or perpetuating an occupational distribution in which blacks are over represented in low status social service occupations (Hodge & Hodge, 1965; Treiman & Terrell, 1975) and under represented in technical and managerial occupations (Gottfredson, 1978a, 1978b). Colleges that are traditionally black have produced the majority of past black college college graduates and still appear to be the most important means of access to afour-year college education for blacks (National Advisory Committee on Black Higher Education and Black Colleges and Universities, 1979). At the same time, the distribution of students among majors in traditionally black institutions is generally consistent with the relative representation of blacks in different types of work (Morris, 1979).